in every direction. What invisible power caused this
great metropolis to spring up amid such savage and forbidding conditions?
It was the human mind. Therefore, nature and the effect of nature's laws
were imperfect. The mind of man remedied and removed this imperfect
condition, until now we behold a great city instead of a savage unbroken
wilderness. Before the coming of Columbus America itself was a wild,
uncultivated expanse of primeval forest, mountains and rivers--a very world
of nature. Now it has become the world of man. It was dark, forbidding and
savage; now it has become illumined with a great civilization and
prosperity. Instead of forests, we behold productive farms, beautiful
gardens and prolific orchards. Instead of thorns and useless vegetation,
we find flowers, domestic animals and fields awaiting harvest. If the
world of nature were perfect, the condition of this great country would
have been left unchanged.

If a child is left in its natural state and deprived of education, there
is no doubt that it will grow up in ignorance and illiteracy, its mental
faculties dulled and dimmed; in fact, it will become like an animal. This
is evident among the savages of central Africa, who are scarcely higher
than the beast in mental development.

The conclusion is irresistible that the splendors of the Sun of Truth, the
Word of God, have been the source and cause of human upbuilding and
civilization. The world of nature is the kingdom of the animal. In its
natural condition and plane of limitation the animal is perfect. The
ferocious beasts of prey have been completely subject to the laws of
nature in their development. They are without education or training; they
have no power of abstract reasoning and intellectual ideals; they have no
touch with the spiritual world and are without conception of God or the
Holy Spirit. The animal can neither recognize nor apprehend the spiritual
power of man and makes no distinction between man and itself, for the
reason that its susceptibilities are limited to the plane of the senses.
It lives under the bondage of nature and nature's laws. All the animals
are materialists. They are deniers of God and without realization of a
transcendent power in the universe. They have no knowledge of the divine
Prophets and Holy Books--mere captives of nature and the sense world. In
reality they are like the great philosophers of this day who are not in
touch with God and the Holy Spirit--denier